Illusions

Illusions (also commonly called illus) are imperfect, weaker copies of heroes, created by spells or items. They look like and are mostly treated like a hero, but are impaired, as they usually have incoming and outgoing damage penalties, dealing less damage and taking more damage than heroes. They are mostly incapable of casting spells or using active item abilities and also have some passive abilities disabled. They also may not drop or pick up items or runes. Illusions yield a little gold and experience based on the hero's level. They do not soak up any AoE experience and gold (they cannot level up, and the gold from last hits they make goes to their owners) and do not interfere with kill streaks or counters.

Illusions can be created from an allied, enemy, or the own hero, copying its appearance, level, attributes, attack values, defensive values like base armor and base magic resistance and their abilities on their current level. All items owned by the hero are copied as well, including all their stats (although some effects of abilities and items are disabled for illusions).

All illusions deal 60% less damage against buildings, making them weaker in pushing. This reduction stacks multiplicatively with the outgoing damage reduction which most illusions have, and also multiplicatively with the damage reduction hero damage does against structure armor type. However, due to the fact that illusions are based on heroes, their damage scales together with the heroes, making them still a significant pushing tool, especially in later phases of a match.

All illusions are invulnerable for one server tick (0.03 seconds) as they spawn. It does not matter which ability spawns them, this goes for all of them. Illusions also always play the same birth sound (which is only audible to allies) upon spawning, and the same death sound upon dying in any way, including upon expiring.

Blue illusions as they appear to allies and enemies. Enemy illusions use a hero health bar and display the player names, while allied illusions have a creep health bar and a circle indicating their duration.

All illusions have an extra texture layer, which makes them distinguishable from the original hero. There are 5 different types of textures which can be seen below.

To allies, illusions always appear with the texture layer, making them always look different than the original hero. For enemies, illusions which use the blue or the yellow textures appear like the original hero, making it difficult to tell them apart from the real hero. Illusions with the second or third texture appear like illusions to the enemy, meaning enemies do see their illusion textures. However, despite this, the portrait of illusions always appears like the original hero to the enemy.

Besides their skin and portrait, their health bar also differs based on whether the illusion is allied or not. Allied illusions have the same health bar as creeps. This also means their mana bar is not visible, as it is only visible when having a hero or creep-hero health bar. Besides this, illusions also have a circle on the left side of the health bar, which indicates their duration.

Enemy illusions use a hero health bar to not make it obvious that they are illusions. They also display the player's or hero's name above them like regular enemy heroes (if the player has the name display toggled on player name or hero name). The player name is based on the owner of the illusion, not of the hero the illusion is based on. This means when an enemy Shadow Demon creates illusions of allies, the illusions carry Shadow Demon's player name. When hero names are chosen, instead of player names, it shows the name of the hero the illusion is based on, and not the owner's hero.

Number of Illusions per Enemy: 1Illusion Damage Dealt: 60%/75%/90% ( 100%/120%/140%)Illusion Damage Taken: 400%Duration: 45Creates magical wall. If an enemy passes through it, an illusion of it is created. If the illusion gets killed, the wall may create a new one if the enemy walks through again.

Max Number of Illusions: 6/8/10Illusion Damage Dealt: 16%Illusion Damage Taken: 500%Duration (from Hero/Illusion): 8/4Has a 40%/45%/50% chance to create an illusion of the hero upon attacking. Illusions of the hero have an 8% chance.

Number of Illusions: 2Illusion Damage Dealt: 30%/45%/60%/75%Illusion Damage Taken: 300%Duration: 8/10/12/14Creates illusions of the targeted ally or enemy. Can target self. Illusions' and hero's positions are not shuffled.

Number of Illusions per Enemy: 1Illusion Damage Dealt: 30%Illusion Damage Taken: 200%Duration: 5/6/7Creates illusions of the caster next to enemy heroes for each enemy hero on the map. Haunt illusions cannot be controlled and do nothing but attack their assigned hero.

Number of Illusions per Enemy: 1Illusion Damage Dealt: 40%/60%/80%/100%Illusion Damage Taken: 0%Duration: 2.5/3.5/4.5/5.5Creates an illusion of each enemy hero within range on cast. Reflection illusions cannot be controlled and do nothing but attack their assigned target. Reflection illusions are invulnerable.

All 3 attributes of illusions (strength, agility and intelligence) are based on the original hero. They copy their base attributes, the attributes gained from levels, and all item bonuses. They fully benefit from every trait of attributes, health, health regen, mana, mana regen, armor, attack speed, and attack damage. They also copy the hero's movement speed, main attack damage, attack animation (and projectile speed), base attack time, attack range, base magic resistance, main armor, base health and mana regen, vision, collision size and turn rate. An illusion's stats, level, ability levels and items are all set upon spawn and do not adapt to the original hero.

Besides copying all the base stats of heroes, these bonus stats (from items or passive abilities) are also copied:

Usually when an illusion spawns, it does not copy the buffs and debuffs the original hero has. There are some exceptions with buffs though. However, they do copy toggle statuses of items and of some abilities.

1 Battlefury's Quell is the only attack damage bonus which fully works for illusions. The reductions of Split Shot and Marksmanship are the only reductions which affect illusions.

2 Diffusal Blade burns less mana for illusions than for real heroes.

3 All 3 modifiers of Elder Dragon Form work for illusions, however, the poison debuff placed by illusions deals no damage, the slow debuff doesn't actually slow target (though the speed on the HUD is decreased).

Most illusions cannot use active abilities and items. The only exception are Vengeance illusions, which are allowed to cast regular and ultimate abilities, but not Scepter-granted abilities. Passive abilities work for all illusions, although many of them are disabled for them, and some have altered effects.

Almost all active abilities work normally for illusions. Only very few have a different effect when the caster is an illusion.

Gamepedia

Partners

In other languages

Content is available under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 unless otherwise noted.Dota 2 content and materials are trademarks and copyrights of Valve or its licensors. All rights reserved.
This site is a part of Curse, Inc. and is not affiliated with Valve.